Rufus wainwright quotes

I should write a musical. That is probably one of the final areas that I should pay attention to, because it does kind of involve everything. It's got theatre, it's got young, pretty people... And it's got money!

I have never cooked a meal in my life and always end up paying for dozens of people to eat with me.

I really need to know I may just never see you again, or might as well You took advantage of a world that loved you well I'm going to a town that has already been burnt down I'm so tired of you, America.

It seems like the older I get, the more unreal the world becomes.

I am undefinable. I don't fit into any particular category.

The thing I hate most is false modesty. The artists who are, like, "Oh, you know, I'm really not that good. Oh, I can't believe I'm here." I find it vaguely sinister, even.

Cigarettes and chocolate milk These are just a couple of my cravings Everything it seems I like's a little bit stronger A little bit thicker A little bit harmful for me.

There is actually a great book called Prima Donna by Rupert -Christiansen that deconstructs the myth. In fact, many of the women who were prima donnas were feminists and incredible forces for their time.

My dad and I have always been somewhat competitive.

When I'm in the classical world, I really treat it as exactly classical and I don't try and spruce it up or jazz it up or make it easier for the masses.

I like to try new things.

The mind has so many pictures Why can't I sleep with my eyes open? The mind has so many memories Can you remember what it looks like when I cry? I'm trying, trying to tell you All that I can in a sweet and velvet tongue But no words ever could sell you Sell you on me after all that I have done.

Unless I have my aunt or my boyfriend to take care of me, I'm a little pathetic.

I've had my ups and downs, and I definitely have a sense - in America, especially - that once you've made your mark and gotten your Rolling Stone piece and your Grammy nomination, that they're on to the next piece of meat, and they don't necessarily like to follow the twistsand turns of an artistic career. Throwing an opera at them is something they have to notice. There's nothing subtle about it.

I wish I could just relax sometimes and make some money, but I always feel like I have to prove some kind of big, profound point.

When it came to using elements of your personal life in your work, my mother was the master, or the mistress. There were three or four songs she wrote about my father - songs about failed love.

My parents were serious working musicians, but they were not stars - not like pop stars that you have now. They had to make a living and that meant touring, working hard, going on the road - and we were roped in.

You get to a certain age, and you feel the need to reward yourself just for existing.

That will to love is very powerful. But it doesn't always win.

When it comes to sitting down and composing, there is no hesitation, no concern, no critics breathing fire down my neck. For me, writing a song is the purest part of all. No one can mess with that.

Prima Donna is my kind of love song to opera but it's not the full experience.

I believe a lot of our lives are spent asleep, and what I've been trying to do is hold on to those moments when a little spark cuts through the fog and nudges you.

The artist who gave me the most inspiration and direction, especially as a singer - and I absolutely consider myself a singer, 100 percent - is Nina Simone. She's my ultimate pianist-singer-type person.

All these poses of classical torture ruined my mind like a snake in the orchard. I did go from wanting to be someone, now I'm drunk and wearing flip-flops on Fifth Avenue.

There's prejudice everywhere. I don't think the music industry is as bad as the movie industry. But I have taken a few hits over the years for my sexuality, and for being honest about my life. In the end, it's the music that rules the roost.

I have this horrible, horrible habit of going on YouTube and checking out comments about what I do.

I still believe that love is the most powerful force in the world, even though I am yet to experience it fully.

I have managed to eke out a good and substantial existence. I'm not shoveling gold bricks or anything, but I do very, very well.

These are just the rules and regulations Of the birds, and the bees The earth, and the trees, Not to mention the gods, not to mention the gods.

I like to sing to Verdi, I like singing to Sibelius, and Mahler maybe.

I want to carve out a serious period of time to focus on the next opera without any distractions. And to do that you need money.

I've developed into quite a swan. I'm one of those people that will probably look better and better as I get older - until I drop dead of beauty.

I may not lead the most dramatic life, but in my brain it's 'War and Peace' everyday.

I basically have needed to go to the piano and give voice periodically to, you know - I'm always afraid to describe it as a kind of therapeutic process, but nevertheless it was a type of unloading that had to occur due to my personal life with my mother's health or just my professional trials and tribulations.

New York is not the centre for American culture and art that it once was because of the forces of conservatism. Giuliani, capitalism - and then there was 9/11. I really believe that if I leave, it will suffer! Maybe that's why I love it here, because I feel wanted.

I've paid the price; I definitely have a reputation that precedes me, and there is a camp that plots my demise. But then again... it's funner that way.

I'm very much a romantic. I'm highly attuned to an older sensibility, which I believe is alive and well. We're not that far ahead of the Romantic Age in society.

I have a lot of advantages: I'm not addicted to horrifying pills. I also have surrounded myself with far more caring and upright individuals. And I wasn't abused as a child, so I'm doing okay!

I think everybody identified at a pretty young age that I was fairly entranced with myself. And that I had to be tempered.

I just think it's better to have ideas. I mean, you can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier, people die for them, people kill for them.

I definitely was always expected and encouraged to be a songwriter from a very young age, ... But really it's because, as a child, I thought I was Judy Garland. And when I started out, I was a little nuts. I thought I was a classic, legendary superstar when only 10 people knew who I was. I feel in some ways that my confidence is misinterpreted as arrogance, which is understandable. But I've also always thought that false modesty is evil.

And you will believe in love And all that it's supposed to be But just until the fish start to smell And you're struck down by a hammer.

I would love to have a number one hit. The truth is if I don't get one, I'll be fine, but at the same time, the truth is that I'm dying for one, as well. But it's worth a shot, I think, while I still have cheekbones.

I think we could all be a bit more elitist.

I do not consider myself a guitar player. My father is a guitar player - I'm not.

The moment something happens to one you love, it's twenty times more intense. You experience pain and enlightenment on a much vaster scale.

To me, songs come of their own volition - and with an open-ended philosophy.

I think the minute you mention death, people run for the hills - unless it's heavy metal. People do not like death.

I'm hyper light-sensitive and must sleep in the equivalent of a sealed tomb.

I'm very fit on tour. I try to eat well, try to sleep. But it's still rock n' roll.

Everything I do, I feel is genius. Whether it is or it isn't.

I really do fear that I'm dying I really do fear that I'm dead I saw it in your eyes what I'm looking for I saw it in your eyes what will make me live.

I'm definitely a fan of juxtaposition. Using the most beautiful line to say the most horrific thing - I think one of the main things in songwriting is definitely friction between the words and the melody.

I definitely consider 'Poses' - the whole album in fact - to be kind of a miracle. Like the last breath of that moment when decadence is healthy, 'Poses' encapsulates that feeling. It's a kind of song and a kind of album that I'll never be able to repeat.

Some people go to Berlin to get more cutting edge; I went and started wearing lederhosen and going to visit baroque palaces.

Crazy as it sounds, I'm a believer in destiny and serendipity, and I have had cosmic experiences all my life. Something told me I was meant for greater stuff. And look, I've had a baby! And I've written an opera!

I've written songs for Shirley Bassey, Marianne Faithfull, and Linda Thompson. I sort of focus on these wonderful, aging divas. But maybe that's because I think I'm Christina Aguilera.

Wouldn't Ponochio II be a great musical, now that he has to face the real world and get a wife... job. Now he wants to be a toy again.

I will take my coffee black / never snack / hang with the wolves who are sheepish.

Once illness strikes, you realize there's not a lot of time for you to do what you really need to do. And there's no time like the present.

I am always writing; if you want to survive in this business, you need to keep working, keep creating and never stop the output.

Musically I'm able to keep going, because it's not about money and it's not about success. It's a challenge.

I am ridiculously high-maintenance.

I was reared on folk music.

Opera needs to be a total escape from real life. To relate to what we're going through today is fine and dandy, but it's really about being transported and completely swept away by a romantic notion.

I'll be honest, I worry sometimes about what I've done. I have tied my whole person to my art and, whatever it takes to get that hook, I will go there and do it.

And I am left behind Corrupted crushed and blind All for a dream That in truth was never really mine.

Life is a game and true love is a trophy.

One of the main destructive forces within our family has been these runaway egos. I think if you look at any show business family, that struggle exists.

I've been thinking of trying my hand at rap. I've been recording snippets on my BlackBerry.

Arguably, the relationship between Liza Minnelli and Judy Garland is one of the great mother-daughter sagas of all time. Certainly, for certain people, and a lot of them, Liza is the bigger star. Liza is the more kind of viable legend, shall we say. Then there's the other camp, where Judy is the one.

I was keenly aware that I didn't want to draw on too many typically doomed aspects of the fated singer. Whether it's Judy Garland or Norma Desmond, there is this tragic quality to older women that one can revel in, and you want it to be more three-dimensional than that. So it was important for the character to be strong and resilient, because there are so many victims in opera.

In the music business, to survive for so long, you have to be able to cut off from your emotions sometimes. And being a father, you're faced with that situation. I know that my father was, with me. I understand why he had to be distant, because to rip yourself away, time after time, is almost more devastating.

Looking back, one of the things I love most about my mom was that she never, ever relented. She stuck to her guns right up until the end. She wasn't abusive, but she was never that thrilled that I was gay.

It's about how whenever I fall in love, I have these expectations of the experience being a perfect dream, which, of course, ruins it. I imagine cradling my lover's head in my lap in a cab in the middle of the night, and drinking champagne in an elegant hotel suite. But life's rarely like that, and I usually end up walking home by myself in the rain.

I believe in freedom Freedom's apparently all I need But who's ever been free in this world? Who has never had to bleed in this world?

My mother and father could not handle even me being gay. We never talked about it really.

When I wrote the opera, I made a deal with myself that for at least an hour a day I would work on it, even if it meant just sitting on my piano bench, staring into space and thinking about it. It's about keeping it regular, like your bowel movements - let's get real: it's your bodily artistic movements! It comes from the same place.

I think my imagination and my passions are still firing away, but it's really the body that starts to make up the rules. It's not a major problem; it's just when you get a little older you realize how much your body thanks you when you are good to it.

There is this church that I go to a lot in New York. I'm not religious but I love lighting candles and stuff. I find it useful.

I'm a big fan of the Pre-Raphaelites. Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, and I realised recently that my music is Pre-Raphaelite in a certain way, in that it reinvents an older era and romanticises it, puts it in this gilded frame.

Places that have experienced great defeat experience a kind of rebirth, which I think America has to do - unless we want to get more decrepit. I don't think we have to destroy the place totally.

You know the question: 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall?' Answer: 'Practise?' Well, in my case, I got there by not practising. I didn't finish my music degree. And when I got into the pop world, I decided not to conform because I figured that the point of being an artist was that you shouldn't be like anyone else.

In retrospect, I'm really shocked at how far I put my heart out there on the line with 'Prima Donna'. I seem to have this knack for being able to accomplish that.

My love of classical hit pretty early. I was 13 when it occurred, and that was really the only music I listened to for many, many years. I went to a conservatory, but I always knew I would be in the pop world, because A) it was more fun and B) you didn't have to practice as much and you could go out more. But I immediately saw this opportunity to inject my material with these sounds that most members of my generation really didn't know about, so it was a great way to differentiate myself from the pack.

My mother had a lot of parties when I was a child. There'd always be a moment when she would place me on the upright piano and have me sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

You had to be an over-the-top, demanding, dramatic figure in order to progress as a woman in Europe over the last few hundred years. Now people say, "You're being such a prima donna," meaning you're being hard to deal with or crazy. It's a bit sexist.

All humans realize they are loved when witnessing the dawn; early morning is the triumph of good over evil. Absolved by light we decide to go on.

Putting all of my time In learning to care And a bucket of rhymes I threw up somewhere Want a locket of who Made me lose my perfunctory view Of all that is around And of all that I do.

I like to make the mundane fabulous whenever I can.

I came out of the closet very young, and I had to cut my teeth pretty fast.

My love of maple syrup. I've been known to knock back a can over a couple days: A swig here, a swig there, and next thing you know it's gone. It's a habit I have to stave off. I don't want to lose all my teeth.

I've developed a bit of a fascination with John Denver. I always thought he was kind of tacky and somewhat revolting and had a kind of simplistic weirdness, but on second listen, he actually did have an incredible voice, and the blatant naiveté of his work is straight-edge, in a way.

Guess the world needs both sun And the moon too Sad with what I have except for you.

Being with the president’s daughter, no matter who the president is, you are connected to the most powerful political force on earth, and that’s scary. And when you mix crystal meth and alcohol with that, it’s…kind of exciting. A little too exciting.

I have an ounce of Lady Gaga's full-bodied ambition.

I could always escape into this demi-monde of homosexuality, which I feel really indebted to. It stopped me being a 'mummy's boy.'

Yes, I'm a homosexual and I like to shock people with glamour.

My mother's songs are really turning out to be masterpieces. I have inherited this incredible legacy and am so fortunate to bathe in her sensibilities. It is tinged with tragedy. I'd much rather she was here in person, but there is still a positive force to come out of her death and that is having the gift of music that she gave.

The Germany I was enthused with was more old fashioned and kind of romantic. I just got there, and the next thing you know, I had this huge gilded album. It was kind of an amazing experience because I didn't intend it to be that way.

Premiering a new opera is probably one of the hardest things in the world to do, and opening nights of any opera are always pretty stressful.

I would love to have a number one hit. The truth is if I don't get one, I'll be fine, but at the same time, the truth is that I'm dying for one, as well.

I'm not born again, I'm not Kabbalah, God forbid, but I did have an experience hitting 30 that I needed to lean on something that assured me that everything is going to be okay. I had to regain a lot of my belief in fairy tales, in happy endings.

Being uncool is being pretty much the coolest you can be.

For me, the iPhone is harder than reading Faust.

I'm your knight in shining armor. I'm here to save you from Linkin Park.

Let the little fairy in you fly!

My greatest experiences in the theatre and the most religious experiences in my life - of which going to the opera is one for me - have been with the Romantic composers' repertoire: it's Wagner, it's Strauss, Verdi, Puccini. That era gets me every time.

I think my mother, more than anyone, knew the importance of inspiration. If it was occurring, you had to use it.

I love being not cool.

I have earned hundreds of thousands of pounds, but I can't seem to get to grips with money.

I have a good face for what I do.

I made the decision to take on board the critical feedback. Reviews are something you can easily ignore as a performer or writer but I chose to not ignore them here and I think that I benefited. I think I'm stronger for it - and I have a tougher skin as a result.

I think I've done a pretty fantastic job, but of course I want to sell millions of records.

After years of hotels, I'm horribly inept at cleaning up after myself.

I definitely try to broaden the scope of music. I don't know if it's pop or classical or what, but I'm religiously challenging myself all the time, for better or for worse.

I find so many songwriters today are missing an element ... either the production is amazing but the songs aren't, or it's the other way around.

I've always gravitated towards opera, and the Royal Opera House is quite possibly the greatest opera house on earth.

Writing an opera and premiering in England, you could say I was going right into the eye of the storm and I came out successfully. A little tattered and bruised, but so what, I made it.

There's no life without humour. It can make the wonderful moments of life truly glorious, and it can make tragic moments bearable.

I very much faced my mother's death with hard, arduous and time-consuming labor. The more I would do, the less I would feel.

As an artist, you put so much into what you do and it can all be torn down in a nanosecond.

I am under no illusion that I will ever be the greatest opera composer in the world, with Wagner and Verdi and Strauss before me. I think my work could fit very nicely into musicals, though.

I don't want to hold you and feel so helpless I don't want to smell you and lose my senses And smile in slow motion With eyes in love.

I am regarded as a usurper, as an imposter and dilettante, because I do technically come from the wrong side of the tracks in musical terms.